Windows 7: Clean Up Factory Bloatware

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Last edited by gregrocker; 14 May 2013 at 10:19 AM..

Hello gregrocker,

I wish I saw this 2 months ago when I bought my Toshiba Tecra R840-16J. This thing have so many stuff installed and since I'm not an expert in this area I do not know what to keep, if anything!!!
And I bought from Norton: 360 v6, Ghost and Utilities15! It seems nothing of these is a good thing to have installed!
I would like to have the max performace for my laptop without hurting anything!
I have installed a lot (?) of sw I really use (Office, astronomy/astrophotography specific sw, Adobe Master Collection CS5, etc) now and It will be much more time consuming now to reinstall everything if I go for a fresh Windows 7 install !!
Any advice?

Thanks,
paulo

Download PCDecrapifier and chiise what you want to uninstall:PC Decrapifier - Download.com

Hiyya Greg wished I had found this tut a long time ago would have saved me so much time and cussing because most of the time I have been doing factory defaults and then having to clear the garbage.

Thanks for a great tut.

All we need now is a guard dog for those irritating apps attached to downloads from Adobe or Cnet like the Ask bar, AVG search, Blekko etc

John

Thanks Greg. I've been using a computer for ever, but I've never tried to 'clean up' bloatware on a new computer... So, thank you very much for the well explained steps. I sure need all the help I can get! WIll try to do this clean up tomorrow.

Let us know how it goes, Maggie.

Greg,
I've found that the Synaptics touchpad entry should also be left checked in the startup programs.

I prefer to leave the Sidebar entry checked since the gadgets which I have there are quite useful to me.

Not necessary, but I like SkyDrive to start at startup time.

Sometimes if your touchpad is not working as you like then having it enabled in msconfig>Startup will resolve it. Normally all you lose is the tap-to-click and touch-scroll features which some find distracting and don't want anyway.

Gadgets and sticky notes are excepted in the Clean Boot procedure give above. I need to add Skydrive which has come out since.

Greg,
My touchpad on my two previous toshiba laptops would not function without the synaptics driver being enabled in the startup and same goes for the elantech touchpad in my asus netbook.

If you like for SkyDrive to run at startup time, then you must have it checked.

I always have mine running so that I'm always current.

Thanks for the update Karl. Skydrive has come out since it was written so I'll add it now, and a caveat about some touchpads.

On four of my machines I use Skydrive to Sync Any Folder to Your SkyDrive Account. It's working well although I notice a few apps downloads missing on each machine sync'd. I may try rooting User folders in Skydrive which has been suggested on their blog to use instead of the symlinks.

Greg,
My previous two Toshiba laptops required the Synaptics driver to start at startup time. this one does also, just since I always have a mouse connected then I've no need for the touchpad.

If you want SkyDrive to start at startup time, then SkyDrive must be checked in the list of StartUp programs.

Here is a snip of the enabled items under the Startup tab of MsConfig.